Environmental Scan a Cornerstone of Committee and Strategic Plan Work

Today’s rapidly changing health care environment requires flexibility, fluidity, and responsiveness. As the home of psychiatric pharmacy, AAPP strives to stay ahead of this ever-evolving landscape to serve members, the profession, and ultimately, the patients our members care for.

Though AAPP has a thorough, member-driven strategic plan providing strong direction, it is monitored and tweaked as needed to adjust or pivot in this dynamic environment. One method recently employed by AAPP to identify and prepare for change was an environmental scanning session.

Held at the front end of AAPP 2024, more than 30 members from the Commission on Innovation and Advancement (CIA), the Continuing Professional Development Committee (CPD) and representatives of most other committees joined the 10 members of the Board of Directors (current and incoming) to engage in a discussion around what changes might impact the practice of psychiatric pharmacy in the next 5 years. Participants narrowed to 17 key topics and then really dug into 10 of them:

1. Provider status and payment
2. Changing landscape of SUD meds and seeking through BCPP
3. Pipeline (burnout, decreased interest in residency, decreased interest in pharmacy, budget issues)
4. Money: Reimbursement, Cost Saving Initiatives, Medication Cost
5. Incorporation of Psych into Primary Care Impacting Need
6. Changing Patient Demographics (CAP, geri, ESL, immigrants, LGBTQIA+, etc)
7. Challenges in advocacy due to state regulations and profession diversity
8. Telehealth, virtual care, and digital therapeutics
9. Artificial Intelligence
10. Politicization of DEI

For each of those topics, small groups explored the implications of the coming change and how AAPP might proactively prepare or respond to the issue. They fleshed out answers to the following questions:

• Why is it important?
  • What could it mean for the specialty?
  • What portion of members will be impacted, and how much will they be impacted?
  • What could it mean for patients?
• How could we respond?
  • In broad strokes, what are a few things AAPP might want to do before or after the change arrives?
  • What responses did the group reject?
  • Is it an advocacy, workforce, or educational/training issue?
• When might it happen?
  • What indicators could tell us when to act?
  • Do we already have a sense of when it might happen?

This environmental scan holds value for the AAPP Board of Directors as well as many committees operating within AAPP. Next steps involve committees reviewing and perhaps operationalizing the information gleaned from this process as well as informing AAPP’s 2025 strategic planning effort.

A special thanks to the members and staff who contributed to this effort!

Ansara, Elayne D.	Douglass, Amber R	Paxos, Chris
Borovicka, Mary	Dress, Jennifer	Payne, Greg
Bostwick, Jolene R.	Ehret, Megan J.	Reinstatler, Kristina
Bozymski, Kevin	Geier, Michelle L	Schimenti, Brenda
Campbell, Austin	Graham, Rebecca	Siliva, Rick
Catanzano, Samantha	Gutierrez, Cindy A.	Stutzman, Danielle L
Cates, Marshall	Haight, Bob	Thomason, Sarah
Chavez, Benjamin	Harris, Suzanne C	VandenBerg, Amy M.
Crismon, M. Lynn	Kirkwood, Cindy	Wartman, CC
Cunningham, Julie L.	Mulhollan, Jessica	Werremeyer, Amy
Cusimano, Joseph M	Onyema, Ijeoma E	Williams, Andrew M
DeJongh, Beth	Overman, Gerald P.	Wong, Kara R